Users such as e.g. doctors or medical assistants, and medical imaging systems such as e.g. X-ray or MR equipment, often work in conjunction with additional electronic systems. One such system is a PACS (Picture Archiving and Communication System), for example. This is used to electronically store the medical image data that has been generated, e.g. X-ray recordings, MR image data records or reconstruction images. The image data is stored in the standard DICOM (Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine) format here. In this context, a DICOM data record or DICOM image contains the actual medical image and its associated header data. Said header data is broken down into various standard tags and free or private tags. The standard tags of the DICOM header contain e.g. information concerning the means used to generate the image, the image type, and the recording parameters used to generate the image.
A person dealing with the image sometimes needs or desires a communication with a partner, e.g. a colleague from another specialist area, with regard to the image. The staff member concerned will usually then attempt to contact an appropriate partner, e.g. in the corresponding specialist discipline, e.g. by telephone. If the partner can be reached by telephone, for example, said partner must view the pictures either locally, i.e. at the location of the person, or on a networked PACS station at the current location of the partner, or on a remote server which is connected via Web-PACS, for example. A problem arises here in that DICOM systems are closed systems which generally work without e-mail support. Simply sending the image via e-mail (particularly during an operation or intervention) is therefore impossible. Furthermore, a recipient of the DICOM image would not be able readily to open or view the image, but would need a special DICOM viewer for this purpose.
A further problem arises if the person desiring the communication is a doctor who is currently working under sterile conditions at an operating table. With the exception of the sterile operating module that has been prepared for them, this person cannot actually use any other devices, e.g. a non-sterile telephone, in order to communicate with the partner. In such cases, it is currently normal practice for e.g. an operating room nurse to hold a non-sterile telephone to the ear of the doctor, so that the doctor does not have to touch it.